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Remember the golden year of 2005 when Relic Entertainment unleashed the phenomenon that was Dawn of War? I do! As a fan of the comics and novels for several years, Dawn of War was the perfect game for me for a number of reasons: I love RTS games, I love Warhammer 40,000, and their love-child was definitely going to be great. That was my working theory when I started playing Dawn of War and I was floored. Everything about the game, whether cutscenes or story or mechanics or gameplay or design or whatever, it was all top-notch. One of the most cathartic gaming experiences of my life. The games that followed, especially Dawn of War II: Dark Crusade just improved on that and I couldn’t be happier really. If there was any sore spot at all however, the tie-in novels from writer C. S. Goto were the anomaly. Tortorous and convoluted stories that seemed to do strange things with the lore, they are among the most unpopular of novels published by Black Library to date. But that’s all going to change, and here’s why.

Exactly five months to the day, Relic Entertainment announced that it was working on Dawn of War III and released the above trailer to the masses, causing a storm in the video game circles everywhere. The previous games are regarded highly, are considered among the best of their genre, and are tied to a fairly well-liked setting. And just in the last couple days we have received some more news about the game, namely that Black Library has hired author Robbie MacNiven to write the tie-in novel, and that Titan Comics will be doing the same for the comics medium. Cue more excitement and gushing and fangasming. Check after the break for the official announcements.

There haven’t been any “Comics Picks of the Week” articles for a while, and the major reason for that is because I’ve just been too caught up with other stuff and I just can’t be… well bothered. It just takes too much out of my time to keep these titles going, especially when Wednesdays also see me trying to get through two TV shows and doing reviews for them. Though, that situation has kind of abated now.

Anyway, this week’s surprise hits were Batman: Arkham Knight #2 and Gotham Central Book 1 from DC. It was a relatively small week for me since I didn’t read all that many new titles and most of those were middling. Ongoing greats were Django/Zorro #4, John Carter: Warlord of Mars #4, Fantastic Four #643 , Inhuman #12, Aquaman #39 , Catwoman #39 , and He-Man: The Eternity War #3 among others .

Anyway, here’s another edition of “Comics Picks For…”. Full reading list, as always, is available here and all my comics reviews are available here.

Last month saw the start of a new arc on Dark Horse’s Tomb Raider. Lara is currently starring in a small stage production of Pride & Prejudice by her friend Jonah, a character carried over from the Tomb Raider game. In the midst of it all we also got to see some more fallout from the previous arc, something that earned her a major nemesis, a man with a real drive to find her and destroy her, someone who is as afraid of her as he wants to kill her. It was a fairly good issue in most respects, and I definitely liked the overall change in pace as well.

Tomb Raider #11 picks up a bit after the previous issue left off, and we see that Lara is back in London and working with her friend Jonah in a theatre production, Pride and Prejudice no less unless I’m mistaken, and things are not working so well for her since she’s a terrible actor. All of this sets in motion some new stuff for the character, which brings in another villain in her orbit, and it remains to be seen whether this new villain is going to be the all-out crazy variety or something else.

Jim Zub and Max Dunbar had a smash hit 2014 with their title Dungeons & Dragons: Legends of Baldur’s Gate, the latest tie-in comic from IDW that sets up the stage for Dungeons & Dragon‘s upcoming expansion Tyranny of Dragons. Bringing back a fan-favourite character and also introducing a band of brave new adventurers, this new comics series has been pretty incredible so far, and we are only on the fourth issue yet, as of this past week. Each issue packs a great twist, has some great characterisation and comes with some really solid art as well. What more could you want?

Last week’s Legends of Baldur’s Gate #4 takes up from where the previous issue left off, namely Delina finding out that her missing brother Deniak isn’t so missing after all and that he is actually behind some of the more dire events happening in Baldur’s Gate of late. Of course, it is all even bigger than that and we truly see the goal of Deniak’s grand plans as he stands revealed as the big bad of the series, with a major twist at the end of the issue that really puts the subtitle of the meta-story forward, Tyranny of Dragons.

Last year I did a small roundup over at The Founding Fields with fellow reviewer Bane of Kings which contained a list of the best new comics to have come out in 2013. It was a rather small list with only 10 entries each from the two of us, reflecting our reading for the year and the consequent small pool to pick from. But in 2014, I greatly expanded my weekly reading, and so for the round-up of the best new comics to have come out in 2014, whether as mini-series or ongoings, I have decided to go much bigger.

There were a ton of new comics to come out last year and many of them started off well enough but unfortunately well by wayside since subsequent issues were nowhere near as good. That however, is a call to make on any new comic and you have to have a wait-and-see attitude for the most part. For this embiggened round-up, I have some mini-series here and some ongoing titles. Some have had multiple issues come out in 2014, while some have had less than three.

Irrespective of that, these are all the most promising new series of 2014, and I think that they are all well worth the read in 2015.

The first Comics Picks of the new year, and while I of course wished for a Magic 40 to kick off 2015, I’m happy with the fact that I didn’t go overboard much and read only a few measly 10 comics, two of which were graphic novels.

For the first week of 2015, the top hits were SHIELD #1 from Marvel, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes from Boom Studios, Legends of Red Sonja Volume 1 from Dynamite, and Star Trek/Planet of the Apes from IDW/Boom Studios. The disappointing reads of the week were both from Zenescope unfortunate, Dark Shaman #3 and Quest: Age of Darkness Volume 1. The others… they were decent, nothing major.

As mentioned above, the graphic novels for the week were Legends of Red Sonja Volume 1 from Dynamite and Quest: Age of Darkness Volume 1 from Zenescope. The former was a fun book where Gail Simone brought together several different female prose writers, paired them with different artists, and wrote a grand, sweeping Red Sonja story. The latter was part of the publisher’s Age of Darkness event and was more a prequel story.

Anyway, here’s another edition of “Comics Picks For…”. Full reading list, as always, is available here and all my comics reviews are available here.

One of the many ways that IDW Publishing’s Star Trek franchise has thrived in recent years is with crossovers with other popular franchises, whether in comics or otherwise. I got back into comics in 2012 with Star Trek/Legion of Super-Heroes, which was a fun story in itself. Crossovers like that can often be quite fun indeed, bringing two very different properties together. There’s also the fact that crossover events have become a done thing these days, with every publisher getting on the bandwagon, especially the Big 2. Of course, in the midst of all that, IDW wouldn’t want to be left behind, especially coming after crossovers like G.I. Joe vs Transformers.

On the final day of last year, which happened to be a Wednesday and thus a New Comic Books Day, IDW and Boom Studios have released a new crossover, Star Trek/Planet of the Apes. The possibilities here are endless really, and when the crossover was announced, I was quite excited since I love both franchises, though I haven’t checked out Boom Studios’ various Apes comics, which do appear to be excellent. But we have this new crossover now, and the writers do a good job of setting up the main conflict and bringing the two wildly different settings together in a great way, which is where the artists come in and do their job.

A few days ago I did my best of 2014 list for the comics I read in the second half of 2014. And back in July of 2014, I did the first “best comics of 2014” post. The reason I mention that is because of the changes I’ve made for this list. While previously I used to do it so that I put up my top 6 comics, in July’14 I did a top 12 on account of the increased number of comics I was reading at the time. And that same holds true for this list as well since I’ve gone up on the number yet again, and this list has the top 20 and then 20 honourable mentions.

More comics, yay!

So, with the books of the second half of 2014 already having been covered, I now delve into my favourite monthly comics of the same period. The next post will be a list of the top graphic novels I read in all of 2014.

The twelfth and final book cover I pick for the 2014 edition of “12 Days of Best Covers of…” is for Erin M. Evans’ fourth and most recent Brimstone Angels novel, Fire In The Blood, the cover for which is done by Min Yum. I just posted my review of the novel, so you can head over to the post before this one to check it out, but suffice to say that Fire In The Blood happens to be the best novel in the series so far and that the ending of it gives me a lot of hope for the next novel, which Erin is currently in the process of writing and which will be called Ashes of The Tyrant.

The first of the twelfth and final set of comic covers I pick this year is for Dungeons & Dragons: Legends of Baldur’s Gate #3 by Jim Zub, Max Dunbar, John-Paul Bove and Neil Uyetake with the cover by Sarah Stone. The second is for Hexed #5 by Michael Alan Nelson, Dan Mora, Gabriel Cassata and Ed Dukeshire with the cover by Dan. The third and final cover is for Secret Six #1 by Gail Simone, Ken Lashley, Drew Geraci, Jason Wright and Carlos M. Mangual with the cover by Dale Eaglesham and Jason. Legends of Baldur’s Gate, Hexed and Secret Six are three of the most recent and also best comics of 2014, and that’s aptly reflected by the internal and external content both, and it really gratifies to be able to share these great covers with you all.

So without further ado, hit the break to see all the covers in their full glory! The full list of all these covers is available here.

The tenth book cover I pick for the 2014 edition of “12 Days of Best Covers of…” is for Gareth Powell’s second Ack-Ack Macaque novel, Hive Monkey, which was an absolute joy to read this year. It follows on from last year’s Ack-Ack Macaque and is pretty much just as good a novel, if not better. Gareth expanded on the world he’d created for this series, and he did it magnificently, with a twist that you could never have seen coming from a mile off. That’s the fun thing about his work, his twists are always awesome.

The first of the tenth set of comic covers I pick this year is for Bucky Barnes: The Winter Soldier #1 by Ales Kot, Marco Rudy and VC’s Clayton Cowles with the cover by Marco only. The second is for Catwoman #35 by Genevieve Valentine, Garry Brown, Lee Loughridge, Sal Cipriano and Taylor Esposito, with the cover by Jae Lee and June Chung. The third is for Predator: Fire and Stone #1 by Joshua Williamson, Christopher Mooneyham, Dan Brown and Nate Piekos of Blambot with the cover by Lucas Graciano. The first cover is for the first issue of a new Bucky Barnes series set in the aftermath of the recent Original Sin event wherein Bucky undertook a thankless but vital task on behalf of all of humanity, inheriting one of Nick Fury’s oldest burdens. The second comic is a soft reboot on the title and follows on from events in Batman: Eternal that see Selina Kyle leave behind her life as Catwoman to become Selina Calabrese-Kyle, one of the most powerful of all the mob bosses in Gotham, and the switch has been darn amazing. The third one is yet another new comic that is a part of Dark Horse’s wider Fire and Stone event and is definitely among the best of the four new mini-series launched by the publisher.

So without further ado, hit the break to see all the covers in their full glory! The full list of all these covers is available here.